Who are the youth of Europe?” “

The enlarged EU will comprise 75 million youth aged from 15 to 25. “Even if heterogeneous (in terms of access to the labour market, education, family life, income, etc.), the young claim their condition as citizens with all their rights and duties. Investing in youth means investing in the richness of our societies today and in the future”. So declares the “White Paper” of the European Commission on youth, drawn up at the end of a wide-ranging consultation conducted throughout Europe from May 2000 to March 2001 (cf. SirEurope no. 9/2001). The survey involved youth of whatever origin, youth organizations, the scientific community, the political authorities and their administrations. The member states organized 17 national conferences that brought together several thousand young people, on the occasion of which 440 contributions were gathered. Work with the young is continuing: the “Youth Convention” is due to open in Brussels on 9 July. It will have the task of consulting the young and gathering the proposals of the new generations for the formulation of the future European constitutional treaty. We report below some of the facts and figures contained in the White Paper which may be consulted in all the main European languages on the site: www.gioventu.it. Vulnerable youth. “In spite of very different situations – says the White Paper – the young share not only values and aspirations, but also problems”. These problems include progressively deferred access to employment, frequent alternations between work and study, and the tendency to postpone the time in which to establish a family of one’s own. School and university, work and the social context no longer play the same role of integration; independence is being acquired ever later. “This – comments the White Paper – is often translated into a feeling of vulnerability about their condition, in a loss of faith in the existing decision-making systems and in a certain disinterest in the traditional forms of participation in public life”. From the consultation it emerges that “a part of youth succumb to indifference and individualism, while another part is tempted by modes of expressive that are sometimes excessive, if not altogether outside the normal democratic channels. A majority of them would like to intervene in political decisions, but fail to find the means to do so”. Ageing societies. Between 2000 and 2020 the proportion of persons between the ages of 65 and 90 will rise from 16 to 21% of the overall population of the European Union, while the proportion of youth between the ages of 15 and 24 will not rise above 11%. According to the projections of the White Paper, a quantitative imbalance between the young and the no longer young will lead to “a qualitative change in relations between the generations”. The financial pressure on the social systems will represent only “one of the facets of the problem”. What’s needed, rather, is “to invent new mechanisms of solidarity” and to “organize in a satisfactory way for everyone the alternation between the generations in society”. Prolonged youth. The White Paper also analyzes the phenomenon of “youth prolongation”. Demographers point out that, under the influence of economic factors (especially due to unemployment) and socio-cultural factors, young people are on average older than they were in the past in completing the various stages of life: end of studies, access to work, creation of a family, etc. We are also witnessing an “overlapping of the sequences of life”: it is possible to be a student, worker and live with one’s parents at one and the same time. From the White Paper it also emerges that the young are fairly mistrustful of the traditional structures of political and social action. A similar phenomenon is registered in their attitude to the European Union: “This divorce between the young and Europe is but one example of the distance registered between the European populations and Brussels”, points out the document. Teenagers express “doubts about the institutions which seem to them too inaccessible, complicated and remote”. This attitude – concludes the White Paper – expresses a “sign of malaise that must not be ignored”.